


Some Avatar

by Deejaymil (orphan_account)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Archive Warnings May Apply, Boarding School, Bullying, Crossover, Gen, Growing Up Together, Kid Fic, Slice of Life, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 13:42:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8403862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: Avatar Spencer Reid: awkward, tiny and perpetually terrified. Sure, his mind was like a computer and his memory encyclopaedic, but he was undoubtedly the worst bender at the Federated Bending Institute, possibly the world.
Aaron Hotchner hadn't expected much from the new Avatar, but he'd expected more than this. 
Most of all, he'd never expected him to become his friend.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Previously posted and pulled down for considerable reworking. For more info, see the author's note at the end.

** **

 

When Aaron Hotchner was seven years old, Avatar Korra died. They watched the announcement on the TV at school, and all the normal got to go home early after a minute of silence for their fallen. The benders stayed behind.

Aaron sat at the kitchen table, watching his mom try to wrestle a spoonful of mashed peas into his brother’s gummy mouth. “What happens when an Avatar dies?” he asked. “Do we just not have an Avatar anymore?”

“A new Avatar is born, honey,” she said, as Sean flipped the bowl with an angry howl. “Oh, Sean…”

“Useless figureheads anyway,” snapped his father as he poured his second drink for the day. Aaron watched carefully for the red flushed cheeks that meant they’d have to be quiet and _somewhere else_ for the rest of the day. “When was the last time the Avatar did anything good for anyone? Benders are all the same, they all think they’re so much fucking better than the rest of us.”

Aaron repeated his father’s words at school the next day. On the bright side, at least he figured he wouldn’t have to hide the bruises the two older benders left when they cornered him at lunch.

When Aaron was thirteen, his father raised his hand to him for the last time. He hit him, then he moved towards the screaming Sean, and Aaron panicked and earthbent a solid wall around them both. They spent the next three hours in there, unsure of how to undo what he’d done as his father screamed at him from outside the wall, until his mother finally took control and went down to the school to find a bender to let them out. Sean thought it was a blast. He babbled and giggled and sang along quietly with the songs Aaron hummed until they were freed.

When his father told him to pack his bags, he wasn’t really surprised.

 

* * *

 

The blonde girl stared intently at him for two hours as the bus bumped along the rattly country roads, before finally sliding across to speak to him. “Are you for the Institute too?” Her blue-hemmed shirt was crisply ironed, their new school’s crest displayed proudly on the breast along with the name.

The Federated Bending Institute. His new home. His only home. No going back.

He nodded, unwilling to leap into conversation. She seemed unperturbed by his silence.

“Same. I’m coming back from holidays. Is this your first year? What element are you?”

He ignored her and she fell silent for a bit, blue eyes wide and sad. It was almost uncomfortable to look into them, as though there was a pain there he couldn’t understand simmering within their patient kindness. It was a look that made him feel small and guilty and a little out of his depth.

“It’s nice there,” she tried again, when the light outside was beginning to dim and fade the world. She kicked her legs, too short to press her feet against the grated floor, and smiled warmly at him. “You’ll stop missing your old friends in no time.”

Now Aaron spoke. “I don’t have any friends.”

He didn’t expect that to change.

 

* * *

 

“You a rockhead?” The boy was tall, dark hair styled carefully to make it look like he didn’t care, and had the kind of face boys at his old school put on right before they tripped him over or threw his bag in the pond. “You haven’t got any colours on.”

His sleeves were ringed with the red that signalled a firebender. Aaron’s own stood bare, still awaiting his new uniform bearing the green earth edging. “I’m new,” he said warily, standing forward onto his toes in case he needed to run away fast. He knew what his dad said about firebenders. _Hot-headed, brash, probably arrogant. He’s bigger than me._ “I’m a… I’m an earthbender.”

It still didn’t quite sound right in his mouth. Like, the moment he’d pulled that wall out of the ground, he’d ceased to be ‘Aaron Hotchner’ and instead just became this title ‘earthbender’.

A grubby hand thrust itself under his nose. “I’m Dave,” the boy announced. “Dave Rossi. You look like fun, rockhead. What’s your name?”

Aaron made his choice. This new Aaron Hotchner had nothing to lose. “Aaron. Aaron Hotchner.”

 

* * *

 

“Does everybody here have nowhere else to go?” Aaron asked one day, watching two waterbenders throw balls of rainwater, giggling madly as people cried out furiously at being splashed. Dave shrugged, biting into his apple with relish and tossing the core to a waiting pigeonrat.

“Nah. This is the best bending school around, people pay bucket loads to send their kids here. The government gives them extra money if they take in orphans and kids with no homes and teach them bending. Poor bastards, I wouldn’t fancy having to live here all year. Imagine Christmas with fussy old Miss. Strauss.”

Aaron bit at his lip, looking at the ground to hide the twist of his mouth that would betray him. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “I can’t imagine having no home.”

 

* * *

 

Three months into his stay at the Institute, they ushered a new kid into class. He stood shaking in front of the thirteen of them; his clothes two sizes too big draped over a scrawny frame and with wild brown hair that looked like it had never met a pair of scissors. “We have a very special addition to our class today,” the teacher announced, scooting the kid forward, his heels skidding on the carpet.

There was silence.

“Introduce yourself,” Miss Strauss said to the tiny kid. He looked up, blinking owlishly at them through thick glasses, trying to huddle back into the overlarge sleeves off his sweater.

“I’m… Spencer. Spencer Reid,” he mumbled, tripping over his words. The faces of the older kids in front of Aaron lit up cruelly, and he groaned. This kid was mincemeat.

Strauss sighed, hardly patient at the best of times. “Keep going, Reid.”

The boy shrugged. “I’m… good at chess? And reading. My mom read me poetry, Valent—” He stopped abruptly, and his face crumpled with fresh grief. Aaron’s chest ached with sympathy. He missed his mom too.

But he’d never get up in front of the class and announce it…

“How old is this kid?” Dave muttered into Aaron’s ear as the class began to laugh. “Why is he even here? He’s too young.”

Aaron didn’t answer, a sick feeling sinking deep into his stomach as the boy flushed red and tried to hide behind his long hair. “Can I sit down now?” he whispered, refusing to look up. Aaron had a horrible suspicion he was crying.

“Not yet, Reid. I told you to introduce yourself properly.”

Hazel eyes bright with tears flickered up and scanned the room, as though looking for an ally. They settled on Aaron, meeting his gaze without flinching. There was a desperation there that Aaron couldn’t help but respond to.

He smiled.

“I’m the Avatar,” Spencer said quietly, eyes never leaving his.

 

* * *

 

The new Avatar, as it turned out, was some kind of genius. Unfortunately, Aaron could have warned him that standing out in such a spectacular way wasn’t a good idea. Not when the kid was seven years old and as skinny as one of Dave’s forearms to boot.

The fourth time they found him hiding in some secluded part of the school, trying to stick together torn books or hide bloodied clothes, Dave finally snapped.

“You gotta stick up for yourself, kiddo,” he scolded, striding towards the tiny boy with a grim expression. “Don’t let them shove you around, you’re the bloody Avatar! Bend them into ash!”

Aaron sighed as Spencer took one look at Dave’s face and legged it, gone before either of them could react. He crouched to pick up the books and bag that the boy had abandoned. “You scared him.”

Dave snorted. “The wind scares him. Some Avatar.”

 

* * *

 

Aaron was alone the day he turned a corner and found a small group of older students sniggering cruelly as they held Spencer’s glasses over his messy hair, out of reach even if the kid could see to grab for them.

“Come on, Avatar,” one of them teased. “Do something to stop us. Bend something.” Another moved, shaking the earth beneath the boy’s feet and knocking him to the ground. “Stop us, prove you can do it!”

Aaron opened his mouth to shout at them, to do _something_ , but his words were drowned out by a snap- _crack_ of lightning slamming into the tiles above the crowd’s head, blowing the lights and sending chips of tiling scattering across the school hall. The crowd screamed and ducked as one, half dispersing at a run.

The ground next to the ringleader shattered from another devastating bolt, throwing him back. A cold-eyed girl appeared in the eddying smoke, dark hair tied in a long pony-tail and expression severe as lightning danced over her fingertips. “What, you gotta pick on a seven-year old to feel like a man, do you?” she hissed. “How about you take me on instead? Or are you too  _scared_  to fight someone who can kick your pasty ass?”

The group scattered instantly, none of them willing to face someone who could bend  _lightning_. One hung back, scooping up the remarkably unharmed glasses and tossing them to the girl, who caught them with a sneer. “I’m disappointed in you,” she called after the dark-skinned boy as he turned and walked away without saying a word. “You’re better than this, Derek.”

She turned on him next with a toss of her ponytail, shifting so Spencer was behind her. “What are you looking at, earthy?” she snapped, passing the glasses back to the kid, who took them with a mumbled thanks.

Aaron shrugged and walked away, not willing to get involved with what he could tell was a temper that matched her element. When he reached the corner and looked back, they were both gone.

 

* * *

 

Some nights he woke with the memory of his mother’s perfume thick in his mind, pressing his face into the pillow so no one else in the earth dorm could hear him sniffling.

He didn’t miss them. He didn’t.

Honest.

 

* * *

 

Aaron was determined to prove himself. He’d become the best bender at the Institute, even if it killed him.

Dave played along for a while. They both improved rapidly as they competed but eventually, Aaron left him easily in the dust. Dave was good, but Aaron was better.

Aaron was the first in the class to bend lava; after that, Dave lost interest.

“I only run races I have a chance of winning,” he joked. “I know when I’m beat.”

Aaron rolled his eyes. “Quitter. Learn lightning generation. You’ll impress them with that.”

“Yeah, right. What fifteen-year-old knows how to bend lightning? That’s advanced bending.”

Aaron thinks of fierce dark eyes and shrugs to hide the sudden heat under his skin. “Well, if you don’t mind being a loser.”

 

* * *

 

Aaron turned sixteen and joined the battle bending class, rapidly becoming a clear contender for top-spot.

At least until the day he walked out and found himself facing the girl from the hall, watching him with the same ferocious eyes he remembered. “You think you have a chance, earthy?” she provoked him, her attitude loose and relaxed and those dangerous hands held by her side.

He took his usual ready stance, feeling the ground shift and answer his call. He didn’t tease her back. He didn’t see the point in posturing.

When she beat him without breaking a sweat, he shook her hand and thanked her for the experience. She almost looked impressed.

“Better luck next time, earthy,” she said, and walked away without another glance.

 

* * *

 

“You’re Aaron Hotchner?” asked a fierce voice one day. Aaron and Dave both turned around to find the Avatar standing there, the dark haired lightning-bender at his side.

“I am,” Aaron said, eyeing the girl. “Why?”

She smacked the smaller kid on the back, letting her hand settle on his shoulder with an easy kind of familiarity, her grin turning wicked. “Spencer needs a teach. For a kid from an earthbending family, he’s completely shit at earthbending. They say you’re the best… at earthbending, anyway.”

“Will you help me?” Spencer asked, hazel eyes intent, and Aaron couldn’t do anything but nod _yes_.

 

* * *

 

“What can you actually _do_?” Dave groaned eventually, after Spencer’s fourth lesson with them. He still hadn’t even managed to make a rock shift.

Spencer shrugged. “I’m better at firebending,” he admitted, shoving hair out of his face. “And I can waterbend. My mom thought I was a waterbender at first, until I accidently set the kitchen on fire.”

“How did you accidently set the kitchen on fire?” Dave asked, looking impressed despite himself.

Another nervous shrug. “I was trying to test the ignition point of common household solvents. It got out of hand.”

“Somehow I doubt you’ve ever actually had anything in hand,” Dave said dryly. “Alright, go again.”

 

* * *

 

Emily Prentiss never really lost the fierce edge to her, but she eventually stopped watching him warily every time he went near Spencer.

She leant over him one day, bringing with her the acrid mix of smoke and some sort of fruit perfume, and pulled a face at the essay he was scrawling. “You might be some bending champion, but that’s complete trash,” she told him, taking the pen from his hand and crossing over several sections. “Get Spencer to look your essay over.”

“I’m not taking homework advice from an eight-year old,” Aaron exclaimed, snatching the pen back, his heart hammering in his chest at her proximity. His skin felt too-tight, on all wrong, and he wanted to lean away from the puff of her breath on his cheek. Wanted to lean back into it. _Wanted_.

An unladylike snort followed that announcement. “That eight-year old is already smarter than our weird little gang all put together,” she informed him. “Not that it’s harder to be smarter than Rossi. I’ve met turtleducks with better GPAs.”

“Don’t you dare,” Dave said warningly, when she finally got bored and wandered off. He didn’t even look up from his book to do so.

Aaron tried to look innocent. “Don’t I dare what?”

“You know she’s related to fire nation nobility right? The lightning bending didn’t clue you in? You’re nuts if you think you have a chance with her.”

“Got a better chance than you,” Aaron joked, scrunching up the essay and lobbing it at his friend’s head.

He wondered if Spencer was free to help him write another one…

He wondered if Emily would be with him.

 

* * *

 

At some point, none of them were sure when, they’d stopped just gathering to attempt to teach Spencer earthbending.

At some point, they’d become friends.

“This is JJ,” Spencer announced one day, arriving at their usual place by the pond with a strangely familiar blonde girl in tow, sleeves edged with a deep blue. “She’s helping me with my waterbending.”

The girl slid into the seat next to Aaron and smiled at him. “I thought you said you didn’t have any friends,” she said quietly, and he recognised her with a rush.

When JJ started hanging out with them as though it was nothing new, head bent in close with Emily’s and giggling over something mysterious and girly, none of them commented on it.

It felt right.

 

* * *

 

Spencer didn’t show up to their meeting place one day for his usual lesson, and Aaron couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Pacing the side of the pond alone, he silently obsessed over where the kid could be. Worry churned in his gut, mixing with a fiery kind of anger that _someone_ had stopped their friend from reaching them; an anger much more suited to Emily than him.

“Stuck in a loop?” It was like he’d summoned her by thinking too loud. He turned to find Emily peering at him with her bag slung over one shoulder.

“Spencer missed his lesson,” he told her, and her face darkened.

 

* * *

 

They split up.

“Oi Hotchner!” someone shouted, and he turned to find the captain of the airbending team jogging up to him, orange sleeves flapping in the wind.

He dredged up his name from a distant memory. “Derek?”

The boy nodded. “Derek Morgan. You looking for your mate? The Avatar?”

Aaron bristled instantly, the ground shuddering under them as he stepped towards the other guy. “If you know where he is, you better tell me now,” he warned, anger making his blood run hot. He kept it under control, the only sign of his temper the slight shiver of the earth under their feet.

“I wasn’t involved,” Morgan exclaimed, stepping back onto firmer ground and looking determined. “They didn’t tell me; they knew I’d stop them. But I know where he’d be.”

Aaron followed, but he never took his eyes off him.

Trust was earned.

 

* * *

 

They found him tied naked to the goalpost. Aaron knew immediately that Morgan had nothing to do with it, because as soon as he saw the raw skin on his wrists where Spencer had struggled to escape and the tacky trails of panicked tears on the boy’s cheeks, Morgan snarled in fury and the wind around them whipped up into a tumult.

Aaron struggled with the ropes desperately, Spencer silent and still with Morgan’s shirt draped over him, but the knots had tightened and bitten cruelly into fragile skin.

Dave appeared at some point, his expression horrified, quietly burning through the ropes to release their friend. Spencer still didn’t say a word. The girls found them before they managed to get him back to his dorm, his feet dragging reluctantly the whole way.

“Who did this?” Emily growled, pacing with lightning in her eyes and dancing over the pale skin of her arms. JJ knelt in front of him, not commenting on the way Morgan’s shirt hung to the kid’s thin knees, and placed her hands over his wrists, healing them effortlessly.

Instead of answering, he turned worried eyes onto Aaron, the same pleading expression in them that he’d worn the day he joined the Institute. “Can I sleep in your dorm tonight?” he whispered, blinking frantically.

Aaron nodded, meeting Emily’s gaze. That was answer enough.

 

* * *

 

Aaron wasn’t surprised to find Morgan standing outside the mixed dorm that Spencer slept in that night when he, Dave, and Emily made their stealthy way there to exact retribution. He _was_ surprised to see a blonde girl standing with him, face oddly reminiscent of JJ’s quiet calm, orange sleeves proclaiming her an airbender as well.

“This is Penelope,” Morgan said when they walked up to him, Dave eyeing him. “She didn’t know what they were going to do. She wants to help.”

“What can a couple of airbenders do?” Emily protested. “Sneeze at them?”

Penelope smiled wickedly, suddenly looking more like Emily than JJ. “Oh honey,” she crooned, bending down to pull a laptop out of her back and sitting cross-legged on the dewy grass. “Did you know that all of the sprinkler systems are automated in this place? And the doors? Not to mention, you would be _disgusted_  by the lax attitude most students have with internet safety. I bet half these kids think that a firewall is some kind of bending move. They’re just frightened little bullying piggies, and I am the IT wolf come to blow their straw homes down.”

Silence followed this odd announcement as she began to tap away intently at the computer, face engrossed.

“Yeah, she’s insane,” Morgan said proudly. “But she’s  _brilliant._ ”

“Do the sprinklers first,” cut in a voice none of them had been expecting, JJ appearing out of the darkness like a wraith. Aaron swallowed when he saw her face. It was _cold_. “Let’s see how cocky they feel about ganging up on a nine-year old when I freeze them to their beds by their crotches.”

 

* * *

 

“Interschool rivalries have always been a cornerstone of the proud history of the FBI.” Their principal spoke sternly into the microphone, his voice crackling with the feedback loop. “But this kind of behaviour will absolutely _not_ be tolerated. If anyone has any information about the groundless attack on the west dorm last night, please see me or another member of the faculty  _immediately_. Any further attacks in the nature of last night will result in suspensions and possible police intervention.”

Dave leaned down to whisper in Aaron’s ear, his tone pleased. “Hardly what I’d call a  _groundless_  attack. They all looked pretty grounded to me with their beds halfway through the floor.”

Aaron tried not to laugh as the principal went on to complain about an electrical fault which had sealed all the faculty in their bedrooms, meeting Penelope’s gaze as she winked cheerily at him. Down the front of the hall, Spencer sat next to Emily. Even five rows up, Aaron could see him grinning.

 

* * *

 

Aaron made his way down to the meeting place one day with a book tucked under his arm. JJ had kindly wrapped it for him after seeing the mess he’d made of it.

It wasn’t every day the Avatar turned ten after all.

He found his friends gathered around something on the ground, Spencer’s messy hair barely visible from the centre of the cluster. “What are you guys looking at?” Aaron asked, book forgotten in his curiosity.

They split apart, revealing a doe-eyed Spencer with a gangly-legged creature sprawled awkwardly in his lap. Aaron blinked as the animal turned a large brown eye on him, wide ears perked up nervously. It shifted and pressed against Spencer’s chest, away from the taller students, large bushy tail tucked between long thin legs.

“He’s a fox-antelope,” Spencer announced, beaming. “ _Vulpes gazella._ He says his name is Arlo!”

“We’re not allowed pets,” Aaron muttered to Dave, not wanting to break the kid’s heart. “How on earth are we going to hide a fox-antelope? Who the hell thought it was a good idea to give him that?”

“No one gave him that,” Dave corrected him, eyebrows raised. “He just showed up, was waiting here for him this morning. And somehow, I think they’re going to make an exception for the Avatar.”

“How do you know his name?” Morgan asked Spencer curiously, reaching out a careful hand for the animal to snuff at.

“I dreamed it,” Spencer told him seriously, and the look on his face was such that none of them questioned him.

 

* * *

 

Spencer graduated when Aaron was nineteen, the only twelve-year-old lined up with the twenty-one-year-old alumnus.

They cheered him on because it was a huge source of pride that the kid they’d helped teach was standing up as a fully-fledged bender, especially when just three years ago he couldn’t even bend a rock. They cheered, despite the feeling that something was coming to an end.

Spencer beamed down at them, Arlo standing next to Emily and braying his delight back at him.

And it was an ending.

But also, a beginning.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t quite the same at the Institute without Spencer there to ask incessant questions, and Aaron found that Emily seemed to be just as lost as he was. It felt… lonelier. They clung to each other, but something was missing.

“I miss him,” she admitted suddenly one day, flopping onto the grass next to Aaron and sucking on the stem of a yellow flower. “Spirits help me; I even miss his stupid donkey chewing on my shirt.”

“I do too,” Aaron said, thinking for a moment and then deciding _not_ to think and just doing it, warily putting his hand on top of hers. Her skin was warm and tingled against his fingers as though he could sense the lightning underneath, and she didn’t pull away. “Is… is this okay?”

Dark eyes met his, and they weren’t fierce at all. “Yes,” Emily murmured, and leaned her head against his shoulder.

They laid like that in silence until the sun dipped behind the hills and the air turned cold.

 

* * *

 

Dave was the next to go, cocky grin flashing at them as he promised to call. He kissed the girls, lingering cheekily over Penelope just to make Morgan scowl, and mock grabbed at Aaron’s face.

“Are you actually going to call?” Aaron asked him as he picked up his bags to leave, only half joking. He’d never been good with goodbyes, and now his life felt full of them.

His friend rolled his eyes at him. “Only a year and you’ll be following,” he pointed out. “Of course I’m going to call, idiot. I’m not just going to disappear into the nether.”

They fell silent and Aaron knew they were both thinking about Spencer, and the resolute silence from the Avatar since he’d walked boldly out of the doors of the Institute the year before. “He has duties now, Avatar stuff,” Aaron defended him, seeing a dark look pass over Dave’s face.

“Friends come first,” Dave replied shortly, and then he was gone.

 

* * *

 

Aaron was one year out of school when he walked into the apartment he shared with Dave and Morgan, and found Emily sitting on his couch with a tall, skinny stranger. Aaron frowned for a moment, about to ask who her friend was, when an inquisitive muzzle appeared at his side, long spiral horns almost knocking over the coat rack.

“Brak,” said Arlo, white muzzle nudging him impatiently for a sugar cube.

“Hi, Aaron,” Spencer greeted quietly, looking up with familiar hazel eyes.

Arlo chewed on Aaron’s sleeve while he considered whether it was worth being angry with his old friend for his silence.

It probably wasn’t.

“Hey, Spencer,” he said with a rare smile, scratching behind the fox-antelope’s large ear.

 

* * *

 

“Where have you been working?” Morgan asked Spencer later that night, over a bowl of noodles. Emily was quiet, taking the opportunity to sidle closer to Aaron, their knees brushing together.

Spencer shrugged. “Here and there. I had to travel a bit, meet a bunch of people. Learn the land. Avatar stuff.” Aaron smirked, knowing how much that would have annoyed the quiet teenager. Spencer had always preferred curling up with a book to learning his bending, or writing essays to talking to people.

And he’d always been terrible with the spiritual stuff.

“They’re thinking about starting up a new department in Republic City,” Spencer said suddenly. “With the Police Force—a sort of psychological defence unit.”

“Psychological?” Dave asked suddenly, perking up with interest. He’d been stonily ignoring Spencer until now, his curiosity overcoming his anger. “What does that have to do with the police?”

Spencer brightened to his subject. “It’s psychological profiling—looking at the minds of the criminals behind the crimes. I’ve been talking to a lot of people, sharing theories. I’m actually writing a thesis on the subject at the moment—they want to trial it with a team of profilers.”

“Where are they going to find people to sign up for that?” Morgan asked, reaching over for a refill. “Who even teaches this stuff?”

Spencer grinned. “Well, no one yet. But we could. How do you guys feel about coming to Republic City?”

 

* * *

 

When he was twenty-four, Aaron became a profiler with the newly minted BAU department of the Republic City Police Force. His friends joined him, under the tutelage of Spencer who by then had managed to collect three PhDs, to the neglect of his Avatar duties, and Rossi, who’d turned out to impressively excel over Aaron when it came to behavioural analysis. For once, Aaron was fine with being left behind.

They worked together brilliantly. Rossi led the team with all the tempered bravado he’d perfected; Morgan and Prentiss evenly matched in their physical skill as well as their intellectual. They had support, JJ their communications and Garcia their tech wizard, and with Spencer an occasional presence that they were loath to miss when he left again on his duties. Aaron became Rossi’s second in command as well as utilizing his bending skills to train the SWAT teams that would later be known as Republic City’s finest. He earned his nickname there. ‘Hotch’ they called him, at first when they thought he wasn’t looking and, eventually, when they knew he was.

Overall, the BAU was a roaring success, and they had the highest case-close rate in the district.

He married Emily Prentiss when he was twenty-six, she a year younger. As a grinning Spencer Reid officiated the ceremony, Hotch thought that this was how his life was meant to be. This was everything he’d ever wanted.

Then came Hankel.

 

* * *

 

Emily frowned, tapping her pen on the paper in frustration. “This guy is a ghost. Sneaks in their homes, kills them, and calls for help? Why would he do that? What’s his motivation?”

The door slammed open with a _bang_ , cutting Hotch’s reply off as a flustered messenger tumbled in. “Avatar Spencer?” he requested, eyes skimming over their collected group as they stared back at him.

Reid stood, pushing hair out of his eyes. “Yeah,” he said reluctantly, mouth in an unhappy line. “That’s me.”

“There’s an urgent call for your assistance in the square,” the messenger recited quickly. “Something about spirits going mad!”

Reid’s face darkened and he strode out, whistling for Arlo who clattered after him. Hotch stood, following him out.

“You need help?” he asked, aware of Reid’s shortcomings when it came to bending.

Reid mounted Arlo smoothly, the tall creature easily bearing his slim weight. “It’s spirit world stuff, Hotch,” he said nonchalantly. “Nothing you can do anyway. I’ll go down there, talk whoever it is into calming down, and I’ll be back before you guys are even done with your profile.”

Then he galloped away, nineteen years old and filled with the audacity of youth.

 

* * *

 

It was unprecedented, they said after. A spirit, working with a human for such evil purposes? How could they have known that the man dubbed, ‘The Remorseful Executioner’ had been working with dark spirits purely to lure the Avatar into a trap?

But a trap it was, and suddenly their little team was left without their resident genius, and none of them knew how to get him back.

It was Garcia who found him.

“There are videos being uploaded to a private server and the facial recognition picked up Reid on them,” she announced, typing feverishly to bring the videos up onto the plasma. “But I don’t—oh my spirits, oh my...”

The video snapped into view. Reid, tied to a chair, his expression groggy and blood matting his hair to his forehead. Beaten. Hotch was forcibly reminded of a much younger Reid on a goalpost, wearing the same defeated expression. The same desperation.

“Why isn’t he bending?” Morgan asked in the following horrified silence, as the man who’d taken their friend appeared in view and leaned down close to their friend. “He’s awake, why isn’t he bending?”

Reid jerked painfully in the chair, eyes widening with terror and Hotch had seen that look before, once. Only once, and he’d hoped never to again. “Bloodbending,” he murmured, stomach roiling. The others made varying noises of revulsion and disquiet. “Garcia, you need to track this. Track it now.”

“Already on it, Aaron,” she said, working furiously through the tears in her eyes.

 

* * *

 

When they found him, he was digging his own grave, and Hotch couldn’t think for a moment for the anger that made the ground beneath them quake and rumble. Reid’s skin was white, his lips tinged purple in the dark light, and he wasn’t shivering as they faced down his captor. _Hypothermia_ , Hotch thought, the ground snarling below him. _Serious, if he’s not shivering._

Hankel turned on them, but he couldn’t bloodbend five benders and the Avatar at once. Hotch bore the brunt of the attack, refusing to allow any of his team the knowledge of how it felt to have his limbs pulled in every direction at once from the inside, crushing him and suffocating him all at once. He was sure that this was what it felt like to die.

A blinding flash of light and Reid was there, eyes gleaming white and face monstrously blank, freed of the insidious bending by Hotch putting himself into the firing line. Hotch stared at him. He knew what this was, theoretically. He _knew_ it. That didn’t mean he was okay with seeing his friend in it.

_The Avatar State._

Emily slammed into his torso as the world around them descended into chaos. She stayed pressed over him until the maelstrom was gone and Reid’s eyes had turned hazel and worn again.

“Are you okay? JJ gasped, lunging for Reid as he staggered and fell into Morgan’s grasp.

Reid blinked up at them unsteadily, swallowing hard. “I think maybe we shouldn’t go anywhere on our own anymore,” he said quietly. “Not when we’re on duty.”

Hotch couldn’t help but choke out a laugh, glancing over at the crumpled form of Hankel. “That’s probably the smartest thing you’ve ever said.”

 

* * *

 

Emily and Hotch welcomed their son Jack into the world on a brisk autumn afternoon, and they had the honour of naming the Avatar as his godfather.

“Don’t worry if you’re not a bender,” Reid told the baby seriously. “Your parents are obsessed, but there’s so much more of the world I can show you beyond bending.”

Hotch laughed. “Some Avatar you are,” he teased his friend.

 

* * *

 

Yawning, he stood, alone in the office except for Spencer. “Go home, Reid,” he told him firmly, pulling the folder his friend was working on away. Reid blinked up at him over the glasses that he only ever used when he was tired and the contacts irritated him. “You don’t need to stay here all night; the paperwork will keep.”

Spencer nodded sleepily, picking his bag up and stretching in his chair. Thirty years old, his eyes were still the same as the first day Aaron had met him, young and eager. Hotch didn’t think he’d ever age like the rest of them, Rossi’s hair more salt than pepper these days and even Emily worrying over the lines around her mouth. She needn’t worry. Hotch loved them. In those lines were the years they’d spent together, every laugh and smile and frown. He couldn’t imagine them being gone.

“You should go out with Morgan sometime,” he said suddenly as he followed Reid to the exit. “Meet someone.”

Reid glanced back, eyes startled. “Meet someone?” he said, voice cracking. “Why?”

Hotch shrugged, not even entirely sure what he’d meant. “You don’t need to spend your life alone just because you’re the Avatar. Even Rossi has had… wives.”

The rolled eyes he got in return were eerily reminiscent of Emily’s. “I’m not alone,” Reid said seriously. “I’ve got you guys.”

 

* * *

 

JJ brought them Henry, and Jack was instantly smitten with the tiny baby as she and Will proudly presented him to the group.

“Want another godson?” Will asked Spencer casually, and the tall man looked almost overcome with delight, scooping up the baby in one arm, the other wrapping around Jack.

“We’re going to have so much fun,” he told them both with a wide grin.

He was thirty-six.

 

* * *

 

Avatar Spencer’s exploits never lived up to his predecessors. After Aang and Korra, he would have been hard-pressed to do so.

He still saved lives, and most of them by using his mind instead of his bending.

He still changed lives, and mostly just by being their friend.

Mostly, just by being loved.

Aaron Hotchner was forty-eight when Avatar Spencer died.

 

* * *

 

They were walking across the street for coffee—just for _coffee_ —Rossi wanted an extra shot, Emily wanted whipped cream, JJ was happy with whatever they had, and Reid was laughing over the punchline of a joke he’d only half told. It was an ambush.

The Avatar had enemies.

The BAU had enemies.

One moment his friend was grinning back at him with his familiar hazel eyes, and in the next the air around them was riddled with bullets and they were both pulling up hasty earth walls to shield themselves.

Something slammed into Aaron, a punch to his gut that brought him to his knees despite not really feeling any pain. Just… pressure, and then the release of pressure, and he looked down as the walls around him crumbled into the ground that was turning a greedy red around his legs. He hadn’t quite been quick enough. Not fast enough. Not. Enough.

Oh, how Dave would laugh to know he _could_ be beaten.

_Emily_ , Hotch thought, and wiped blood from his wedding ring. A gun sounded.

Then there were arms around him, another wall enclosing them, as Spencer pressed close and pushed healing hands against his stomach, his head low and breathing wet.

“How’d you get here?” Hotch asked, or tried to, the sound muffled by the earth surrounding them and the sound of battle outside. “You had no cover. No vest. That’s not procedure.”

Spencer didn’t respond, and Hotch closed his eyes to wait for rescue.

When they dismantled the earth wall around them, Hotch looked down to numbly note the amount of blood they were sitting in, pooling around their legs and filling the air with the scent of copper.

Rossi made an odd kind of broken noise near his ear, and when Hotch looked up the world swam and doubled and darkened. The last thing he knew was Emily reaching for him and Spencer watching it all with empty eyes, his shirt stained red.

 

* * *

 

His funeral was a state-ceremony, people lining the streets and waving flags with rearing fox-antelope emblazoned on them. Hotch couldn’t help but think that only a handful of the thousands of people attending really deserved to be there at all.

They didn’t know him.

They didn’t know what had been lost.

He held Emily’s hand the whole way through as she sobbed onto his shoulder, Jack curled around his side with his face against his shirt so no one would see him cry. He thought quietly that nothing would ever really be right again.

 

* * *

 

When Aaron Hotchner was sixty, there was a knock at the door of the home he and Emily had retired to once it had become apparent they’d lost more than just a friend that day. The ache in the bullet wounds in his gut had never faded, he’d never quite regained his vigour, and there was a facet of their soul that they’d buried with their Avatar.

Emily opened the door to find a dark haired girl with fierce eyes standing on the porch. He blinked. For a moment, he saw double. The Emily of his heart standing with her back to him, aged by the years and the grief they’d suffered, and the Emily of years ago standing facing them, young and alive and utterly determined.

“You’re Aaron Hotchner?” the girl asked in a voice that made him feel fifteen again, as he stood and walked to the door to examine her. “They say you taught the last Avatar, that you were the best earthbender in Republic City.”

“I was,” he said carefully. “Who are you?”

She squared her shoulders and her expression softened, became tentative and wanting. Suddenly, it wasn’t Emily looking out of her dark eyes, but Spencer. “I’m the Avatar. Will you teach me too?”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is a previously written fic from about... two years ago? I think. Anyway, I had some crushing feedback from a friend which led to a complete crisis of faith about it last Christmas and I pulled it down and couldn't look at it for a long time. I've finally gone in and reworked some of the issues he had with it--notably, that I'd given characters' achievements to other characters in order to make them look better, which was never my intention, and some OOCness--but I'm still not happy with the final product. However, I lack the knowledge base at the moment to verbalize WHAT I hate about this fic, and I'm also sick of spending hours fiddling with it and stressing over it... 
> 
> Basically, this fic is beginning to haunt my dreams and I can't handle tweaking it anymore, so I'm posting to get it out of my mind. I'm not at all happy with it and I suspect it's slightly a disservice to my readers to post it as it is, so I apologise. I just have a terrible hatred of having work sitting around doing nothing. Quality posting will return soon, I promise!


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